The Russian Revolutions of 1917

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The Russian

Revolutions of 1917

The Northern Impact and Beyond

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Boston 2020

The Russian Revolutions of 1917

The Northern Impact and Beyond

Edited by Kari Aga Myklebost,

Jens Petter Nielsen, and Andrei Rogatchevski

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Myklebost, Kari Aga, editor. | Nielsen, Jens Petter, editor. | Rogatchevski, Andrei, editor.

Title: The Russian Revolutions of 1917: the northern impact and beyond / edited by Kari Aga Myklebost, Jens Petter Nielsen, and Andrei Rogatchevski.

Description: Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019037404 (print) | LCCN 2019037405 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644690642 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644690659 (adobe pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Russia, Northern—History—Revolution, 1917-1921. | Soviet Union—History

—Revolution, 1917-1921—Influence. | Norway—History—1905-1940. | Sweden—History—

Gustav V, 1907-1950.

Classification: LCC DK265.8.R83 R87 2019 (print) | LCC DK265.8.R83 (ebook) | DDC 947.084/1—dc23

ISBN 978-1-64469-064-2 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-64469-065-9 (adobe pdf) ISBN 978-1-64469-324-7 (open access pdf)

Book design by Kryon Publishing Services. Cover design by Ivan Grave.

Published by Academic Studies Press 1577 Beacon Street

Brookline, MA 02446, USA www.academicstudiespress.com

This book is subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law.

An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-64469-324-7. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org

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Cover Picture: An Explanatory Note vii

Acknowledgments viii

List of Contributors ix

A Note on Transliteration xii

Introduction

Kari Aga Myklebost, Jens Petter Nielsen and Andrei

Rogatchevski (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) xiii Part One: The Northern Impact

1. The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the North:

Contemporary Approaches and Understanding 3 Vladislav Goldin (Northern [Arctic] Federal

University, Arkhangelsk)

2. The Russian Revolution in Sweden: Some Genetic

and Genealogical Perspectives 17

Klas-Göran Karlsson (University of Lund)

3. The Idea of a Liberal Russia: The Russian Revolutions

of 1917 and the Norwegian Slavist Olaf Broch 34 Kari Aga Myklebost (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

4. Arkhangelsk Province and Northern

Norway in 1917–1920: Foreign Property and Capital

after the October Revolution of 1917 54

Tatyana Troshina and Ekaterina Kotlova

(Northern [Arctic] Federal University, Arkhangelsk)

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vi Table of Contents

5. Russian Emigration to Norway after the

Russian Revolution and Civil War 69

Victoria V. Tevlina (UiT The Arctic University of Norway;

Northern [Arctic] Federal University, Arkhangelsk) 6. Soviet Diplomacy in Norway and Sweden in the

Interwar Years: The Role of Alexandra Kollontai 79 Åsmund Egge (University of Oslo)

7. Apprentices of the World Revolution: Norwegian Communists at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ) and the

International Lenin School, 1926–1937 99

Ole Martin Rønning (The Norwegian Labor Movement Archives and Library, Oslo)

8. The Impact of the October Revolution on the

North-Norwegian Labor Movement 118

Hallvard Tjelmeland (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

Part Two: Beyond

9. Avant-garde Artists vs. Reindeer Herders:

The Kazym Rebellion in Aleksei Fedorchenko’s

Angels of the Revolution (2014) 133 Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT The Arctic

University of Norway)

10. 1917: The Evolution of Russian Émigré Views

of the Revolution 153

Catherine Andreyev (University of Oxford)

11. Russian Revolutions Exhibited: Behind the Scenes 164 Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia (The British Library)

12. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Kremlin’s

Policy of Remembrance 188

Jens Petter Nielsen (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

Index of Names 207

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An Explanatory Note

I

n February 1920, when the Bolsheviks recaptured the city of Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, General Evgenii Miller’s White North Russian government fled just in time to Northern Norway on board the icebreaker Kozma Minin.

Together with the government, there were hundreds of White soldiers and other supporters. The icebreaker arrived safely in Tromsø and soon continued southwards along the Norwegian coast. The cover picture shows the Kozma Minin arriving at a harbor near Trondheim, where the Russian refugees were to submit to preliminary internment.

The photo is owned by, and reproduced courtesy of, Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum, Trondheim. Photographer: Schrøder, March 6, 1920.

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Acknowledgments

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he editors would like to thank Professor Paul Dukes, Alice Jondorf, Jens I. H. Nielsen, and UiT The Arctic University of Norway, for their assistance with the preparation of this volume.

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Catherine Andreyev is an Emeritus Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Oxford. Her publications include Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement 1941–1945: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories (1987) and Russia Abroad: Prague and the Russian Diaspora, 1918–1938 (2004;

co-written with Ivan Savicky).

Åsmund Egge is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo. Among his publications are books and articles about Russian and Soviet history, Russian-Norwegian relations, and the history of Communism. His works in English include: The Kirov Enigma: The Murder that Unleashed Stalin’s Terror (e-book); Red Star in the North: Communism in the Nordic Countries (chief editor); and “Soviet Diplomacy and the Norwegian Left, 1921–1939”, in K. A. Myklebost and S. Bones, eds., Caution & Compliance: Norwegian- Russian Diplomatic Relations 1814–2014 (Orkana Akademisk, 2012).

Vladislav Ivanovich Goldin is Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Regional Studies, International Relations, and Political Sciences at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Honorary Scientist of the Russian Federation, Honorary Worker of the Higher School of Russian Federation, and member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He has authored about 600 publications (530 academic works, including thirty books).

Klas-Göran Karlsson is Professor of History at Lund University, Sweden.

Since 1987, when he defended his PhD thesis on history teaching and politics in Russia and the Soviet Union from 1900–1940, he has written extensively on the Soviet history of historiography, nationality problems, state-organized terror, and migration processes. He has also published

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x List of Contributors

several works on genocide studies and European uses of history. At present, he is conducting a large research project on the historical lessons of Communism and Nazism.

Ekaterina S. Kotlova (MPhil in Indigenous studies; Specialist degree in History) is a historian and the art editor of the Arktika i Sever (Arctic and North) journal at NArFU (Arkhangelsk, Russia). Her research interests include cultural anthropology and the social, economic, and ethnic aspects of twentieth-century history of the Arctic and North.

Kari Aga Myklebost is Professor of History and Barents Chair in Russian Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She has published articles and book chapters on various aspects of the historical relations between Norway and Russia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with a special focus on the northernmost regions of the two states. Her works include studies in diplomatic and economic relations, scientific relations in polar research, and state policy towards northern minority groups. She is currently working on a biography of Olaf Broch, Norway’s first professor of Slavonic Studies and a topical figure in Norwegian-Russian relations during the first half of the twentieth century.

Jens Petter Nielsen is Professor of History at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies, and Theology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He has published extensively on Soviet history and historiography, as well as on Russian-Norwegian relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Lately, he has edited Sblizhenie: Rossiia i Norvegiia v 1814–1917 godakh (Getting closer:

Norway and Russia 1814-1917) (Moscow: Ves Mir publishing house, 2017).

Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia is Lead Curator of Central and East European Collections at the British Library. She has taught various courses related to Russian literature, language, and culture at the Russian State University for Humanities (Moscow), Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, London School of Economics and Imperial College London, and has worked as a research fellow at the Institute of World Literature (Moscow). In 2017, she published Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Death (London: British Library Publishing, 2017).

Andrei Rogatchevski is Professor of Russian Literature and Culture at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Among his latest co-edited volumes/

thematic clusters are “Filming the Strugatskiis,” Science Fiction Film and Television

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8, no. 2 (2015), “Russophone Periodicals in Israel,” Stanford Slavic Studies 47 (2016), “Madness and Literature,” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 80 (2017), and “Russian Space: Concepts, Practices, Representations,” Nordlit 39 (2017).

Ole Martin Rønning is Director at the Labor Movement Archives and Library, Oslo. He obtained his PhD in 2010 for his thesis “Stalin’s Students: Comintern Cadre Schools and the Communist Party of Norway, 1926–1949”. He has published several articles about the Norwegian and Scandinavian Labor movements. His key fields of research are: Norwegian/Scandinavian Labor, the Comintern and international Communist movement, and relations between the Soviet Union and Norwegian/Scandinavian Labor.

Victoria V. Tevlina is Professor and Doctor of Historical Sciences at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and Professor at Northern (Arctic) Federal University (Russia). She has published monographs, book chapters, and articles on the following topics: socioeconomic and sociocultural developments in Russia; the relationship between Russia and Norway from the nineteenth century to the present; the social history (welfare system, social education, etc.) of Russia and the Nordic states; and Russian emigration to Norway.

Hallvard Tjelmeland is Professor of Twentieth-Century History at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His expertise includes regional, immigration, media, and labor movement history. Over the last fifteen years, he has written extensively on Cold War history and Norwegian-Soviet/Russian relations.

Tjelmeland is participating in the program “In a World of Total War: Norway 1939–1945” and leads the research group “From North Front to Ice Front.”

Tatyana Troshina is Doctor of Historical Sciences and Professor at the Northern (Arctic) Federal University. Her research encompasses the sociocultural and local history of Russia’s European North in the first decades of the twentieth century. She has authored 250 academic publications, including ten monographs.

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A Note on Transliteration

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he contributors to this volume tend to use a modified Library of Congress transliteration system, as long as it does not deviate too far from the established tradition of anglicizing Russian surnames.

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istorical anniversaries often serve as occasions for reflecting on existing readings of past events and on how perceptions of historical events have changed over time. All over the world, 2017 saw a multitude of conferences, exhibitions, and seminars devoted to the centenary of Russia’s February and October revolutions. This testifies to the fact that the Russian Revolution is still considered of global importance, the reverberations of which reach far in space and time, including into our present. In Norway, several conferences were organized in commemoration of the centenary, and this book is the result of one of them. In October, 2017, UiT The Arctic University of Norway hosted an international conference—The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Northern Impact and Beyond. The aim of this gathering was to explore the events of 1917 with a focus on the northern regions and, in particular, the impact of the revolutions on Russia’s neighbor state in the northwestern corner of the empire, Norway. The conference also included contributions that reached beyond the North, opening up for more general discussion about the revolutions of 1917 and their effects in Europe, as well as in Russia. Several contributions explored the reception of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in Scandinavian states and their importance for bilateral relations between various countries.

Geographical notions are relative and their content varies with the vantage point of the subject. In this volume, “the North” refers in some contributions to the Nordic countries, in others to the High North—that is, the northernmost parts of Norway and Russia, including the adjacent border regions of the two states. The northern perspective is significant when it comes to the relation between Norway and Russia, as the two countries share not only a northern border, but also a long history of managing vast northern territories on land and at sea. Norway and Russia both consider themselves northern states, and their geographical location has played a critical role in the history of both

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xiv Introduction

countries.¹ The articles in the present volume demonstrate that commemoration of the centenary of the Russian Revolution would be incomplete without an exploration of this (somewhat overlooked) northern dimension. These articles are presented in a more or less chronological order, charting various aspects of both the short- and long-term influence of the Russian Revolution within Russia, beyond its borders, and in the North as a whole.

Part one of the volume opens with the article by Vladislav I. Goldin of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Arkhangelsk. In “The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the North: Contemporary Approaches and Understanding,”

Goldin argues that the civil war in the north—as in Russia at large—can be char- acterized as a national and international phenomenon which included many political, class, social, economic, social-cultural, cultural, ethnic-national, and other conflicts, clashes, and contradictions. The Allied intervention in northern Russia started in early 1918, and lasted until the end of 1919. The Allies helped anti-Bolshevik forces seize power in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and initiated the main fighting against the Soviet forces. Goldin makes it clear that the withdrawal of the Allies led to the failure of the White cause in the Russian North, and that the question of Allied responsibility for the civil war in northern Russia is one of the most important in historiography. The Supreme Administration of the Northern Region could not solve the main questions which were put on the agenda: those concerning labor, peasant-agrarian issues, and the national question, etc. The administration was fully dependent on support from abroad. The Bolsheviks managed to capitalize on the Supreme Administration’s problems, and skillfully carried out their propaganda offensive, accusing their opponents of unpatriotic, anti-Russian feelings and actions.

The next contribution, “The Russian Revolution in Sweden: Some Genetic and Genealogical Perspectives,” is by Klas-Göran Karlsson (University of Lund, Sweden). Karlsson focuses on how Sweden influenced the Russian revolutionaries and on how the Russian Revolution, in its turn, made a last- ing impression on Swedish society, politics, and culture. Conservatives—most of whom sympathized with Russia’s world war enemy, Germany—completely repudiated the political changes that took place in Petrograd in March and November, 1917, and often depicted them as two stages on a downhill slide toward the decomposition of Russian society. Meanwhile, broader liberal and social democratic groups in Sweden welcomed the fall of the Romanov dynasty

1 Cf. K. A. Myklebost, J. P. Nielsen, V. V. Tevlina, A. A. Komarov (eds), Net Severa, a est′ severa:

The Manifold Ideas of the North in Norway and Russia. Moscow: URSS/LENAND, 2016.

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and saw the rise to power of the Provisional Government in March, 1917, as a promising development that could promote stabilization, freedom, and democracy in Russia, and—indirectly—at home. However, when Petrograd became even more radicalized in 1917, these same liberal and social democratic groups saw a growing threat and dissociated themselves from Russia’s social and political transformation. Russia in 1917 has often been used politically in Sweden as a menacing event, and constructed as bound up with events at home that resemble the revolution and the rise of the Bolsheviks.

Aspects of the immediate reception of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in Norway have been studied by Kari Aga Myklebost (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) in her article “The Idea of a Liberal Russia: The Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the Norwegian Slavist Olaf Broch.” Olaf Broch was a leading expert on Russia in Norway, and wrote on a regular basis for the conservative newspaper Aftenposten about Russian politics and society. The political liberaliza- tion in the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution, with the establishment of legal political parties and the Duma, was greeted with enthusiasm by Broch.

He believed this to be the start of a new era for Russia, bringing her closer to the modern states of Western Europe, in general, and neighboring Norway, in particular. With the February Revolution of 1917, these expectations were reinforced. Broch reported in Aftenposten on the development of the situation in Petrograd, openly supporting the political strategy of the foreign minister of the Provisional Government, Pavel Miliukov. However, he was greatly dis- turbed by Lenin’s rhetoric and the growing popular unrest during the summer and early autumn of 1917. He received the news of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October with astonishment and disgust, and shared the opinion of Western Europe’s establishment that the Bolsheviks were merely a temporary phenomenon. Through his widely read articles, Broch played a part in shaping the perception of the February Revolution as bloodless, glorious, and politically legitimate.

The socioeconomic aspects of the bilateral relationship between northern Norway and Arkhangelsk province during the revolutionary period are investi- gated by Tatiana Troshina and Ekaterina Kotlova—both of Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Arkhangelsk—in their article “Arkhangelsk Province and Northern Norway in 1917–1920: Foreign Property and Capital after the October Revolution of 1917.” The Arkhangelsk Bolsheviks nationalized the property of foreigners, among whom Norwegians were prominent. However, when the Whites came to power in Arkhangelsk they refused to pay any com- pensation. The Whites claimed that it was the obligation of the Bolsheviks

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xvi Introduction

and that, since they had lost power, no money would be forthcoming. The situation with foreign trade became further complicated when combined with financial and currency issues. Nothing was decided in a proper manner and the reputation of foreigners plummeted among locals. Foreign ownership existed for as long as it was necessary for the Soviet state to resolve its financial problems with minimal cost. The economic difficulties of the 1920s forced the Bolsheviks to issue special decrees to allow concessions, mixed companies, and foreign shares in enterprises. In Arkhangelsk province, these concessions mostly applied to the forestry sector.

Victoria V. Tevlina of UiT The Arctic University of Norway and of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, Arkhangelsk, considers specific aspects of “Russian Emigration to Norway after the Russian Revolution and Civil War,”

while also reflecting on Russian migration to Scandinavia and the Russian diaspora in general. Migrants consisted of officers and government officials from the White northern government during the civil war, who had to flee when the Bolsheviks conquered Arkhangelsk; fishermen and peasant traders, who had had close links with northern Norway from before 1917; and Norwegians who had settled in Russia. The postrevolutionary wave of Russian emigration is undoubtedly a peculiar chapter in the history of Russo-Norwegian relations, despite its modest size.

Åsmund Egge (University of Oslo, Norway) analyses “Soviet Diplomacy in Norway and Sweden in the Interwar Years,” focusing specifically on the role of Alexandra Kollontai. Kollontai was head of the Soviet diplomatic representation, first in Norway (1923–30, except for 1926–27 when she was in Mexico) and then Sweden (1930–1945), and an important figure for bilateral relations between the aforementioned states. Among her achievements were Norway’s de jure recognition of the Bolshevik government and the establishment of trade agreements between the two countries. Egge’s article looks at the dualistic nature of Soviet diplomacy—on the one hand, its wish to foment world revolution and, and on the other, its need to establish and consolidate normal diplomatic relations. Against this backdrop, Egge discusses the degree to which Kollontai affected relations between states. The article concludes that Kollontai was an outstanding diplomat, who gained respect and admiration as both a professional and an individual.

Ole Martin Rønning (The Norwegian Labor Movement Archives and Library, Oslo) is the author of “Apprentices of the World Revolution: Norwegian Communists at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMZ) and the International Lenin School, 1926–1937.” Rønning examines

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Norwegian participation at educational institutions for foreign communists in the Soviet Union during the interwar years, known as the international cadre schools. The objective of these schools was to strengthen the international communist movement and secure Soviet leadership. The article describes the for- mation and development of the cadre schools, and how the schools molded the political ideals and identity of its students. The cadre schools are seen through the lens of Scandinavian and especially Norwegian participation. The article also includes a section discussing the influence of former cadre school students within the Norwegian Communist Party up until the late 1960s. The article concludes that the cadre schools did play a role in establishing and maintaining a communist movement in Norway that was loyal to the Soviet Union.

Hallvard Tjelmeland (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) examines

“The Impact of the October Revolution on the North-Norwegian Labor Movement”—that is, the counties of Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark. The scholar identifies pockets of left-wing radicalism and pro-Soviet/Russian sym- pathy throughout the region—for instance, in Southern Varanger in eastern Finnmark, in Hammerfest in western Finnmark, in Tromsø and Harstad in Troms county, and in mining communities, such as Salangen in Troms, and Sulitjelma, and Rana in Nordland. Pro-revolutionary, or revolution-inspired, sentiments manifested themselves, for example, in journalism, industrial actions, and a high proportion of voting for the political left, from the late 1910s to the present (with periodical variations in intensity and geographical spread).

Opening part two, Andrei Rogatchevski of UiT The Arctic University of Norway directs the volume’s focus away from northern Norway to the Urals, and from revolutionary practices and feelings to the representation of the Russian Revolution on the big screen. His “Avant-garde Artists vs. Reindeer Herders: The Kazym Rebellion in Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Angels of the Revolution (2014)” analyzes a memorable, heavily fictionalized, and mytholo- gized art house film about the early 1930s Kazym rebellion of the Khanty and Nentsy against the Soviet policy of collectivization. Rogatchevski explains why such a mythologization is necessary, as opposed to a straightforward documen- tary about a little known but significant episode in the anti-communist struggle of indigenous people in Siberia.

The Russian Revolution led to mass emigration. In her article “1917: The Evolution of Russian Émigré Views to the Revolution,” Catherine Andreyev (University of Oxford) summarizes various émigré attitudes to the revolution, from the Vekhi collection (edited in 1909 by Mikhail Gershenzon) to Mensheviks, and from Eurasianists and Solidarists to the Peasant Russia and

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xviii Introduction

Changing Signposts movements. Having emigrated, major participants in the upheavals of 1917 tended to concentrate on the events of that year and often sought to justify their own actions, as well as criticize the actions of their opponents. Further, new émigré groups arose, which found arguments about what happened in 1917 inadequate and wanted to add new elements to the debate. Despite the diversity of opinion among émigrés concerning how they should relate to the USSR, and about what they valued within Russian culture, a fundamental continuity can be observed between prerevolutionary ideas and those which arose after emigration. Andreyev concludes that while it is still too early for us, perhaps, to judge the full meaning of the revolution, it was a central concern of those who had to leave Russia after 1917.

The article by Ekaterina Rogatchevskaia (The British Library) “Russian Revolutions Exhibited: Behind the Scenes” shares the author’s thoughts on the 2017 exhibition Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myth at the British Library, of which she was a lead curator. The exhibition was shown in commemoration of the centennial of the Russian revolutions, aimed at a broad and for the most part British audience, and drew most of its material from the British Library’s collections. One of the ambitions of the exhibition was to contribute to the broader historiographical trend of viewing the Russian revolutions as part of a longer chronology that includes both the First World War and the Russian Civil War. Rogatchevskaia explains the curatorial decisions that were made, in terms of both the objects chosen for the exhibition and the aesthetic reasons behind their placement. The article also discusses responses from visitors and review- ers, and puts the exhibition into the wider context of similar projects commem- orating the Russian Revolution.

Jens Petter Nielsen of UiT The Arctic University of Norway concludes the volume with “The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Kremlin’s Policy of Remembrance.” His research question is: what kind of remembrance policy underlies the Kremlin leadership’s management of the history of the Russian Revolution? It is not difficult to understand that after the break- down of the Soviet Union the new, post-Soviet leadership in Russia needed a reinterpretation of the Russian Revolution. In the wake of the total rejec- tion of historical materialism, it had to find a way to connect the country’s past with the present. Putin wants to locate his new regime within the tradition of Russia as a great power, and underline the benevolent part played by the state in Russian history. Putin’s problem, however, is that the Russian Revolution, which devastated the tsarist state and the Russian Empire, does not fit into this picture of historical continuity. At the end

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of his article, nevertheless, Nielsen suggests that the October Revolution could have still been included in Putin’s metanarrative of Russia’s history, without weakening the continuity of the great power tradition.

The choice and treatment of the subjects outlined above make it clear that a hundred years after the Russian Revolution there are still new things to say about it. We hope this volume will encourage further studies of the topic.

Kari Aga Myklebost, Jens Petter Nielsen, Andrei Rogatchevski

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The Northern Impact

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and Civil War in the North:

Contemporary Approaches and Understanding

Vladislav Goldin (Northern [Arctic] Federal University, Arkhangelsk)

T

he aim of this article is to analyze the particulars of the development of the Russian Revolution and Civil War in the North. The term “North” (that is, the European north of Russia) implies the territory of three provinces within the administrative borders of the Russian Empire in 1917—the Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and Olonets provinces. This vast and varied territory, large enough to contain several European countries, had a population of approximately 2.7 million by 1917. Today, it includes the Komi and Karelian republics, as well as the Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, and Vologda provinces.

There is a large historiography devoted to the Russian Revolution and Civil War in the North. Since the 1920s, more than a hundred books on this subject have been published, dozens of dissertations defended, and several thousand articles issued in the USSR/Russia and abroad.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian North was a huge and sparsely populated region with immense natural resources. It was a border region with close commercial and cultural contact with foreign countries and their populations. Russian northerners had their own specific way of life and an established, unique, and productive culture. The main features of the northern mentality were independence, freethinking, and a tradition of mutual assistance. There was a democratic outlook, a sense of fearlessness and tranquility, and no inclination to apply brute force for elim- inating contradictions and conflicts.

In order to characterize the social and economic situation in the North before the Revolution of 1917, it is important to stress that notwithstanding rapid industrial development elsewhere (industrial production in 1917 was

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4 ^{Part One}ⁿ The Northern Impact

twice that of 1900), the North was mainly rural. More than 90 percent of the population (although less than 90 percent in the province of Arkhangelsk) lived in the countryside. Agriculture was one of many sources of livelihood for the northern peasantry. Hunting and fishing, seasonal work, numerous hand- icrafts producing goods for sale, lumbering and sawing of timber, peddling goods, and so forth, could be seen in different combinations from one area to another. Most northern peasants lived in social communities (obshchina).

Northern state peasants had no experience of the evils of landlordism and were less susceptible to radicalism before and after 1917.

There were about 35,000 industrial workers in the large factories of the North, including 24,000 working at sawmills before 1914. Approximately 25,000 worked on northern railroads, and after the Murman railway was built this group grew rapidly during the First World War. Port workers, especially those evacuated from Latvia throughout the war, played an important role in the revolutionary events in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. The total number of non-industrial workers in the three northern provinces was more than 380,000.¹

The leaders of the local elite, entrepreneurs, and the intelligentsia believed that government policy in the North was too centralized, and that it was unable to recognize the peculiar needs of the northern economy and society. They demanded a modernization of the North and more control over local affairs through institutions of local self-government. Their relations with the government were uneasy in many respects. Nevertheless, the political situation in the North, before and during the Great War according to police accounts, was stable. The influence of the revolutionary parties was limited and did not seriously disturb the local authorities and police either before or during the war.

The news about the February Revolution of 1917 and the overthrow of the tsar reached the North via telegraph and was warmly welcomed by the different social groups of the population. There were many meetings, demonstrations, and solidarity marches. The Festival of the Revolution was celebrated in Arkhangelsk on March 10 with the participation of 20,000 to 40,000 people from different social strata. The first, short period of the revolution was char- acterized in the North, as in the whole country, by joy, dreams, and hopes, with mass public activities and the establishment of many new institutions and organizations.

1 Mikhail I. Shumilov, Oktiabr′skaia revoliutsiia na Severe Rossii (Petrozavodsk: Kareliia, 1973), 26–27.

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In March 1917, Soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies were organized in the towns of the region and later Soviets of peasants’ deputies were established in the countryside. The coalition of SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries) and Mensheviks dominated most of the northern Soviets almost entirely in 1917.

In the first days and weeks of the revolution, ideas of class compromise were popular, along with cooperation among different social and political groups and organizations. As a result, in March 1917 Arkhangelsk, Vologda, and certain other towns, were each given their own committee of public security.

These committees included representatives of self-government, public and business organizations, and Soviets that had recently been formed. In June 1917 the Provisional Government finally established a zemstvo²for the first time in Arkhangelsk province.

Soldiers and sailors were at the heart of political life in the Northern Region, as well as in Russia as a whole. There were 43,000 of them in the North, and they founded their own organizations in 1917: the Central Committee of the Arctic Flotilla; the Central Committee of the Army; and the Central Committee of Soldiers’ Delegates in Arkhangelsk. These organizations (especially the Central Committee of the Arctic Flotilla) were radical, with a strong Bolshevik element. They demanded that Soviets take control of local affairs and lead the revolution to the next stage. Alongside these developments, there was also growth in trade unions, workers’ factory committees, and the cooper- ative movement in the North.

Local political parties were rather small in the North. There were about eighteen hundred SRs in Vologda province at the end of summer 1917 and a few hundred of them in Arkhangelsk and Olonets provinces. There were approximately nine hundred Kadets (Constitutional Democrats) in Vologda province and even fewer in Arkhangelsk and Olonets provinces.³ There were a few hundred Bolsheviks in the northern provinces.

Possibilities for regional policy and politics expanded greatly after the fall of the tsar. Different political and social organizations began to

2 Zemstvo was an institution of local self-government created on an elected basis and instituted during the reforms of 1860s and during the few next decades in Imperial Russia.

However, these bodies were not instituted in all provinces of the state. In the North, they were instituted in the Vologda and Olonets provinces and not in the Arkhangelsk province because the composition of its population was considered too democratic.

3 Shumilov, Oktiabr′skaia revoliutsiia, 78, 107; Andrei N. Egorov, “Kadetskie organizatsii Vologodskoi gubernii v 1917–1918 gg.,” in Evropeiskii Sever: istoriia i sovremennost′

(Petrozavodsk: KNTs AN SSSR 1990), 43.

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realize their own aspirations in the North in 1917, as well as in Russia at large, and to work out their own programs. All this had both positive and negative consequences. No effective system of governance was established by the Provisional Government (after the destruction of the old tsarist one)—neither at state, regional, nor local level. All over Russia, including the North, many organs and organizations tried to put pressure on governance or even govern. The final result was poor.

After the short first stage of revolution—with its joy and celebration—a destructive phase began. In Russia, and in the North especially, there were numerous growing crises. There were problems with the supply of food and industrial goods; the standard of living was falling; and there was dissatisfaction with the authorities. However, no bloody conflicts arose in the northern provinces in 1917, and political struggle was carried out by peaceful means.

The news about the Bolsheviks’ accession to power in Petrograd was fol- lowed by discussions in the Northern regional and local institutions, zemstvo municipal self-governing bodies, and Soviets in the northern provinces. Most of them did not support the new central power. Only a few Soviets in small towns such as Murmansk, Soroka, Kandalaksha, Sukhona, and Sokol recog- nized the Bolshevik government immediately. An acute political contest for power became a reality in most northern towns.

Most of the population lived in small and widely dispersed settlements that were isolated from each other. People suffered from a lack of information about political processes and took a position of “wait and see.” Among the northern, moderate socialists, the ideas of “democratic power, including all the shades of political parties, united in the Soviets” and a “homogeneous” government were popular. But these proposals were rejected by the Bolsheviks. The relations between the various Russian socialist groups became ever more irreconcilable.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917 were a clear indicator of the political preferences of the northerners. The SRs won in the countryside, but in the towns the majority of the population generally voted for the Bolsheviks (Arkhangelsk; Murmansk), or Kadets (Vologda; Velikii Ustiug).

On the whole, 73 percent of northerners voted for the SRs, 15 percent for the Bolsheviks, 7.3 percent for the Kadets, and 0.9 percent for the Mensheviks.⁴ In total, eight SRs, one independent (who went over to the Bolsheviks), and one Bolshevik were elected as deputies of the Constituent Assembly.

4 Leonid M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (Moscow: Mysl′, 1968), 416;

Iurii M. Rappoport, Osushchestvlenie ekonomicheskoi politiki Kommunisticheskoi partii v usloviiakh Evropeiskogo Severa, 1917–1925 (Leningrad: LGU, 1964), 12.

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Since the end of 1917, the influence of the Soviets and the position the Bolsheviks had in them had been increasing. By the spring of 1918 the Bolsheviks, in alliance with the left SRs, were already in control of all provin- cial and most municipal and district Soviets in the North. Their position was not firm, however. Most of the population, primarily the peasants, again took a neutral “wait and see” position. In the end, the status of the new authorities depended on their ability to find a way out of the deep crisis into which the country and the Northern Region had plunged.

The origins and beginning of international intervention and the civil war in the North were connected with the small port town of Murmansk and its neighboring territory, Murman. These events (of 1917 to the first half of 1918) were not only of regional, but also of national and international importance, and became a significant milestone in the history of intervention and the Russian Civil War.

For a long time, the Murman coast had been a sparsely settled region with a population of a few thousand people. This changed during the Great War. The recently constructed town of Murmansk became the only ice-free port in European Russia that was suitable for landing Allied war supplies. The railway that connected the port with the capital was completed at the end of 1916. Murmansk also became a major Russian naval base in the High North and served as a base for the Allied (mostly British) navy, which had been sta- tioned in the waters of the Barents and White Seas since 1915. The navy’s task was to protect the vital northern sea lanes against floating mines and attacks by German submarines. British Rear Admiral Thomas W. Kemp was commander of the naval squadron.

The strategic importance of Murman explains why the Entente coalition countries, primarily Britain, wished to strengthen their hand in the area. A secret Anglo-French agreement on the division of spheres of influence in the south of Russia was signed in Paris on 23 December 1917. It was also agreed that the Russian North would be a British sphere of influence.

British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Arthur F. Balfour, wrote in January to the consul general of the British Embassy in Petrograd, Francis O. Lindley, that the British government considered their continued presence in the northern area to be desirable and “had no intention of withdrawing the naval forces at Murmansk.” Frederick C. Poole, the British general and chief of the Russia Supply Committee in Petrograd, wrote to London in January 1918: “Of all the schemes I have heard, the one I like best is to boost up the Northern Federation—with Arkhangelsk as center. There we could easily

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consolidate the Government—one Man of War in the harbor would do that.

We could reap a rich harvest in timber and railway concessions and control the two Northern Ports.”⁵

At the end of 1917, the population of Murmansk numbered about 13,000 and consisted almost entirely of newcomers: railroad and construction workers and their families, as well as soldiers and sailors. This was a transient population that did not intend to stay in the area. The Murmansk Soviet was predom- inantly unaffiliated to a party, but was the first in the North to acknowledge the Bolshevik government in Petrograd (on 26 October 1917). The main military commander of the Murmansk Fortified Region (Glavnomur), Rear Admiral Kazimir F. Ketlinskii, driven by the need to maintain both defense and order, supported this decision. The Bolshevik influence was considerable in the main public organizations: Murmansk Sovzheldor (the local committee of the Union of Murman Railwaymen) and Centromur (the Central Committee of the Murmansk Flotilla).

During the first half of 1918, the general situation in Murman trans- formed profoundly for the following reasons, among others: the demobiliza- tion of the soldiers and sailors; the departure of the construction workers;

the murder of Ketlinskii; a change of the structure, status, and staff of the Murmansk Soviet; a growing dependence on Allied provisions; a political and military crisis involving primarily Britain and Germany; and territorial claims of the White Finns and their raids on the region.

The Entente representatives did their best to strengthen both their own significance and the ambitions of separatists in the region. Naval officer Georgy M. Veselago, executive secretary of both the People’s Collegium and the Murmansk Soviet, and his anti-Bolshevik companions in arms (former general Nikolai I. Zvegintsev, chief of the local military forces, Vladimir M. Bramson, head of the Department of Civil Governance, etc.), favored the gradual self- isolation of the region from the Bolshevik government. They wished to create in Murman a separate regional administration (independent of Arkhangelsk and Moscow) under Entente protection.

Allied intervention in North Russia, initially in Murman, began in a unique international situation. The interests of the warring coalitions—the Entente countries, and the Central Powers, represented primarily by Great Britain and Germany—were pushed relentlessly there. Furthermore, it is necessary

5 Andrew Rothshtein, When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul who Rebelled (London:

Journeyman Press, 1979), 60–61.

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to take into consideration the Finnish Civil War (January–May 1918), where the White Finns were supported by Germany and the Red Finns by Bolshevik Russia. The objectives of the White Finns and Germany concerning North Russia (Murman and Karelia, especially) were obvious.

Several documents and events during the first week of March 1918 illus- trate the different and contradictory interests, trends, and tendencies that guided the situation in Murman and the Russian North as a whole:

1. The treaty of March 1 between the Bolshevik government and the Finnish Socialist Workers government;

2. The so-called “Oral Agreement” of March 2 between the Murmansk Soviet and military representatives of the Entente. (The necessity of accepting Allied assistance to defend Murman against the threat of the White Finnish invasion was sanctioned by the people’s commis- sar Lev D. Trotskii in his telegram of March 1);

3. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 3 between Bolshevik Russia and the Central Powers;

4. The landing of the German forces on the Aland Islands on March 5—the prologue to the major German intervention in Finland a month later;

5. The landing of the first detachment of British Royal Marines in Murmansk on March 6;

6. The agreement of March 7 on cooperation between Germany and the White Finns.

It was the beginning of the “Great Game” in Murman, with participation by Soviet Russia, regional and local authorities, the Entente countries, Germany, socialist Finland, and White Finland. All the participants tried to realize their own goals. The Allies hoped to organize intervention in Russia

“by invitation” or “with consent” of the Bolshevik government and to thereby reestablish the Eastern Front. Germany wanted the Russian government to adhere to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and had intentions to occupy or control the Murmansk area, the northern Russian ports, and the Murmansk railway.

It also wanted to push the Entente naval ships and military forces out of the Russian North. The Red Finns hoped to include western Murman and eastern (Russian) Karelia in the Finnish Socialist People’s Republic as a result of an agreement with the Bolshevik government. The White Finns dreamed about a Great Finland ranging from the Arctic up to the Baltic Sea, and began military raids in spring 1918, to seize Murman and eastern Karelia. Hoping to bide their

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time until the commencement of world revolution—which they believed was imminent—the Bolshevik leaders dealt evenhandedly with both the German coalition and the Entente, as well as tried to prevent them from fighting on Russian soil.

In spring and June 1918, the Allies, headed by Britain, strengthened their sway in Murman step-by-step. They sent warships and landing troops, and supported local anti-Bolshevik elements and their separatist ambitions. The Allies and their Russian associates tried to justify their increased military presence in Murman as a necessary response to the White Finnish and German threat to the region—especially after the victory of the White Finns in the civil war in Finland, which had been predetermined by German intervention.

The Entente forces, together with Soviet military detachments, engaged in fighting with the White Finns, who had invaded the border territories of Murman in spring and early June 1918, thus expanding their power and influence in the Russian North. At the beginning of June 1918, the Supreme War Council decided on an Allied military intervention in North Russia, por- traying it as an anti-German move. General Poole, who was an ardent advocate of the Allied military intervention in northern Russia, actively participated in its planning and preparation. He arrived in Murmansk on May 24 as head of the British mission, and was appointed commander in chief of the Allied forces in Russia by the Supreme War Council at the beginning of June.

The Bolshevik government saw the growing danger of the Entente’s anti-Bolshevik and anti-Russian character, but had no forces to prevent it.

The government tried instead to use political and diplomatic means to pro- test against Allied activity in Murman and insisted, unsuccessfully, that the Murmansk Soviet do the same. On June 30, 1918, however, the Murmansk regional Soviet refused to execute these orders from Moscow and demanded withdrawal of the Entente troops. This meant a rupture with the Bolshevik government. The chairman of the Murmansk Soviet, Aleksei M. Uirev, was declared “an enemy of the people and an outlaw.”⁶ On July 6, the so-called

“Temporary Agreement” for cooperation was signed between the presidium of the Murmansk regional Soviet and the representatives of Great Britain, France, and the US. In reality, an occupation regime was established in Murman, and all spheres of life were controlled by the interventionists.

The Murman events of the summer of 1918 marked the beginning of the Russian Civil War in the North. The Entente intervention, initially proclaimed

6 Izvestiia VTsIK [News of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee], July 2, 1918.

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as anti-German, became in fact anti-Bolshevik and an undeclared war against Bolshevik Russia. The plans for moving most of the Czechoslovak Legion to the North failed, however, as a result of its anti-Bolshevik mutiny at the end of May. It meant the collapse of the initial Allied plans. A lack of sufficient military forces for the Russian North was a big challenge for the Allied countries and their military command.⁷

While the genesis of the civil war in the Russian North was connected in large part with the Entente intervention in Murman, it had numerous other causes: the deterioration of the socioeconomic and political situation both in the country at large and in the North; some extraordinary measures imple- mented by the Bolshevik authorities; and the persecution of the opposition and limitation of its activities. Conflict was also exacerbated by the use of illegal political and military methods by the Bolsheviks’ rivals.

The Russian anti-Bolshevik organizations prepared a coup d’état in Arkhangelsk in collaboration with the Entente military representatives and diplomats. The coup in Arkhangelsk on August 2, 1918 took place simultane- ously with the arrival of the Allied fleet and military intervention. These events, and the beginning of a full-scale military intervention, signaled a new stage in the civil war in Russia. Without the Allied interposition, the anti-Bolshevik struggle in the North would hardly have taken the form of civil war.

On August 2, the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region was formed in Arkhangelsk, headed by Nikolai V. Chaikovskii, a veteran of the Russian revolutionary movement, and one of the leaders of the Popular Socialist Party and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. The Supreme Administration consisted mostly of SRs, and its first ten decrees began with the phrase, “For the sake of the Motherland and the achievements of the

7 The Czechoslovak Legion, originally an all-volunteer battalion, consisted of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks residing in the Russian Empire. In the summer of 1917, it was allowed to also include Czechoslovak prisoners of war. From 1917, the Czechoslovak Legion took part in the fighting in Ukraine, together with the Russian Army. On 25 March 1918, an agreement was signed between the Bolshevik authorities and representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council about the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion through Vladivostok to France. However, on May 2 the Supreme War Council of the Entente decided to use the Czechoslovak detachments as a nucleus of Entente forces in the intervention in the Russian North. This plan ran aground due to the anti-Bolshevik uprising of the Czechoslovak Legion, which was strung out along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok at the end of May 1918. The Czechoslovak Legion became the main force of the Allied intervention in Siberia and the Far East, and contributed to the full-scale Civil War in Russia.

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revolution.”⁸ Chaikovskii wrote in a letter from Arkhangelsk to Paris that “the program of the Supreme Administration aimed at restoring the democratic order of 1917.”⁹

The real power, however, was in the hands of General Poole. He controlled the main spheres of life in the city and region, and acted without ref- erence to, or respect for, the Supreme Administration. In short, he mistrusted the socialist government and supported right-wing organizations. Chaikovskii tried to appeal to the Allied diplomats who arrived in Arkhangelsk on August 9, but without definite results.

On the night of September 5 and 6, 1918, the group of officers headed by the commander of Russian military forces of the Northern Region, Captain Georgii E. Chaplin, arrested the members of the Supreme Administration and sent them into exile at the Solovetskii monastery located by the White Sea. This coup was organized by right-wing circles. After mass protests and intercession by Allied diplomats, the ministers were released and returned to Arkhangelsk.

But the prestige of the Supreme Administration was severely undermined after the Chaplin putsch, and this event was highly important for the anti- Bolshevik movement and the subsequent course of events in the civil war in the Russian North. This experience demonstrated the sharp conflicts within the anti-Bolshevik movement, and the inability of its different factions to work together. The moderate socialists, who alone enjoyed wide popular support, were condemned by right-wing groups and the Allied military command for having carried out the policies of discredited former prime minister Kerenskii (kerenshchina). On the other hand, the anti-Bolshevik socialists mistrusted the ex-tsarist officers, who alone could organize a real military force for the struggle against the new regime. The Supreme Administration did not receive the support of the Allied military administration.

At the beginning of October 1918, Chaikovskii formed the Provisional Government of the Northern Region to replace the Supreme Administration, and was the only socialist in the new government. The term “Provisional” in the title of the government instead of “Supreme” was in recognition of the limited powers of the Russian authorities. The government asked its opponents

“to give up local and class interests” and “to suspend the parties’ difference of opinions” for the sake of “salvation of the Motherland,” and to work jointly

8 Vestnik Verkhovnogo Upravleniia Severnoi Oblasti [Herald of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region], August 10, 1918

9 State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). F. 5805, Op. 1, D. 132, L. 5.

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with the Allies.¹⁰ But it was nearly impossible to carry out this political course during the civil war. The majority of the population was indifferent to the government’s promises and policies, and more interested in ending than in continuing the war.

The military situation in the North was very complicated. Initial plans for military intervention failed. They could reach neither Moscow nor Vologda on the Railroad Front, and seized only Obozerskaia station, located seventy miles to the south of Arkhangelsk. The attempt to reach Kotlas on the North Dvina Front also failed. The organization of the local armed forces had a poor start. A volunteer enrollment into the so-called Russian People’s Army pro- duced only 1,000 volunteers in August, and only 250 of them were sent to the front.¹¹ An attempt at mass conscription failed. The local population had no wish to fight. At the same time, the Bolshevik resistance to the Allied intervention was growing. In September 1918, the Sixth Army was formed—under the command of former colonel Vladimir M. Gittis and former general Alexander A. Samoilo—to confront the interventionists.

The Allied intervention was anti-Bolshevik in character. It was not possible to describe it as a defense of the local population against the Germans, as there were none in the North. The situation worsened after the end of the First World War. Following the Armistice, it was not possible for the Allies to justify their activity using political, military, and strategic considerations connected with the Great War. Their anti-Bolshevik political and ideological motives were obvious, as were their geopolitical and economic intentions: control over the strategically important Russian border region (its ports, communications, and local economies); the acquisition of goods and raw materials (often without any consent from the local Russian authorities); and gaining concessions.

There were 23,516 foreign officers and soldiers, and only 7,156 (mostly mobilized Russians), in the armed forces of the Northern Region at the end of 1918.¹² All of them were under the British commander in chief, General William E. Ironside, who replaced General Poole in this position in October 1918. The number of Bolshevik forces ranged from 15,000 to 18,000 in the winter of 1918–1919.

Despite the official decision on the withdrawal of the Allied forces, the British war minister, Winston Churchill, did his best to convert the

10 Vestnik Verkhovnogo Upravleniia Severnoi Oblasti, October 9, 1918.

11 GARF. F. 16, Op. 1, D. L, 52. 54.

12 Army. The Evacuation of North Russia. 1919 (London H. M. Stationary Office, 1920), 19–20.

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evacuation into a full-scale offensive operation in the North, as soon as weather permitted. He dispatched fresh British reinforcements—two bri- gades of the Russian Relief Force—to Arkhangelsk in May–June 1919.

Churchill planned to attack in the direction of Kotlas and thus join with Admiral Kolchak’s White forces.¹³ But mutinies in the White Army of the Northern Region led to the decision to evacuate from the Russian North in the summer of 1919. The Allied command held that the continuation of the war without their support was senseless, and suggested the evacuation of the White forces. However, the commander in chief of the Northern Front, General Evgenii K. Miller, rejected this advice. He bet on White victories on the other main fronts of the Russian Civil War.

After the evacuation of the Entente troops, the leadership of the anti- Bolshevik Northern Region tried to look for new allies. All attempts, however, were unsuccessful: The Finns, who had dreamed of a Great Finland at the expense of Russia’s northwestern territories, occupied the Pechenga area which had been controlled by the White Russians; and Karelian separatists seized some areas near the border with Finland (and with the help of the Finns) and tried to establish independent republics with their own governments.

The economic situation in the Northern Region worsened rapidly from late 1919 to early 1920. The government had always been dependent on foreign support. It needed foodstuffs and coal, for example, but suffered from a shortage of foreign currency and could not pay for supplies from abroad. The government tried to force the local population, primarily the business commu- nity, to increase its contribution to the war effort through volunteer actions.

It also imposed special measures, such as strict regulations and a demand for exporters to surrender all foreign currency in exchange for Russian currency.

All these measures failed to seriously improve the situation, and instead led to dissatisfaction among businessmen in both the North and abroad. The result was that the government lost support as its social base weakened. At the same time, the lower classes demanded improvements to their social and economic circumstances, and an end to the Civil War.

In February 1920, the White Northern Front collapsed because of army mutinies. The leadership and command of the Northern Region and Northern

13 Alexander Vasilevich Kolchak (1874–1920), a polar explorer and commander of the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Civil War, he was proclaimed the Supreme Ruler and Commander in Chief of All Russian Land and Sea Forces. In other words, he was the leader of anti-Bolshevik Russia. His residence and his government were based in Omsk. In January 1920, he was arrested and later executed by the Bolsheviks.

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Front, as well as some groups of soldiers and civilians, managed to escape to Norway or Finland. This was the end of the Northern Front and civil war in northern Russia.

The civil war in the North, then—like the Russian Civil War as a whole—

was a series, or complex, of conflicts:

1. between the Entente forces and the Bolsheviks, 1918–1919;

2. between Red Army and White Army detachments, 1918–1920;

3. between the Finnish “volunteers,” who invaded Murman and Karelia, and the Bolshevik armed detachments supported by Entente sec- tions, March–June 1918;

4. between the Reds and the Finns, 1918–1919;

5. between the Entente forces, together with the Finnish Legion and Karelian regiment (both of which were organized by the Allies), against the Finnish volunteers and the Karelian separatists, 1918–1919;

6. between the Karelian separatists supported by the White Finns and the Russian Whites, 1918–1920;

7. between the Karelian separatists and the supporters of Bolshevik power, 1918–1920;

8. mutinies, rebellions, and underground movements behind the front- lines of the Whites and Reds;

9. the activities of the White and Red partisan detachments.

Although the leaders of the Entente countries rejected responsibility for the civil war in North Russia, the Allies laid the groundwork for anti-Bolsheviks taking power in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and initiated the main fighting against the new regime’s forces. The withdrawal of Allied forces led to the failure of the White cause in the North.

Disunity in the anti-Bolshevik movement was one of the main reasons for its defeat in the Russian Civil War. There were a number of conflicts within the opposition camp in northern Russia: between the Allied countries as participants of the intervention; between the military command and diplomatic corps of the Entente countries in the North; between the Allied countries, the Northern Region, and the White Finns; between the Allied military command and the administration of the Northern Region; and between different anti-Bolshevik political groups in the North. The White authorities could not solve the main questions that were put on the agenda—those concerning workers, peasantry, agriculture, and relations between the local and the national. They were fully

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dependent on support from abroad. The Bolsheviks skillfully capitalized on these failings, and carried out an effective propaganda offensive that accused their opponents of unpatriotic, anti-Russian, feelings and actions.

Bibliography

Shumilov, Mikhail I. Oktiabr′skaia revoliutsiia na Severe Rossii. Petrozavodsk: Kareliia, 1973.

Egorov, Andrei N. “Kadetskie organizatsii Vologodskoi gubernii v 1917–1918 gg.,” Evropeiskii Sever: istoriia i sovremennost′, 41–44. Petrozavodsk: KNTs AN SSSR, 1990.

Spirin, Leonid M. Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii. Moscow: Mysl′, 1968.

Rappoport, Iurii M. Osushchestvlenie ekonomicheskoi politiki Kommunisticheskoi partii v usloviiakh Evropeiskogo Severa, 1917–1925. Leningrad: LGU, 1964.

Rothshtein, Andrew. When Britain Invaded Soviet Russia: The Consul Who Rebelled. London:

Journeyman Press, 1979.

Army. The Evacuation of North Russia. 1919. London H.M. Stationary Office, 1920.

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Sweden: Some Genetic and Genealogical Perspectives

Klas-Göran Karlsson (University of Lund)

T

he upheavals in Petrograd in 1917 took place within Sweden’s range and reach. For many Swedes, the events were ominously close. While Sweden—a neutral country—was not directly involved in the First World War, the conflict caused food shortages that led to strikes and hunger riots as far as the western shore of the Baltic Sea. Growing class antagonisms and the conservative Swedish political parties’ persistent opposition to democracy were other driving forces behind popular discontent. No doubt, the situation in Petrograd provided demonstrators on the streets of Stockholm with inspiration. In the radical newspapers, the mounted military and police ordered out to confront them were called “Stockholm Cossacks.” Sweden has never been closer to a social revolution than in the years 1917–1918.

In Swedish society, the Russian Revolution aroused contradictory feelings.

Conservatives, most of them with sympathies for Russia’s world war enemy, Germany, totally repudiated the March and November political changes in Petrograd, often depicting them as two stops on a downhill slope towards the decomposition of Russian society. The events in Russia confirmed the general historical lesson that revolutions devour their own children, a conservative newspaper warned.¹ Meanwhile, broader liberal and social democratic groups in Sweden, positioned in favor of the Entente powers, welcomed the fall of the Romanov dynasty, and saw the rise to power of the Provisional Government in March 1917, as a promising development that could promote stabilization, freedom, and democracy in Russia, and indirectly also at home. However, when conditions in the Russian capital once more radicalized later in 1917, these groups sensed a growing threat and expressed their dissociation from the new Russian social and political trends.

1 “Krigströtthet,” Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, November 12, 1917.

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For smaller radical groups in Sweden—many of them syndicalists who played an active role in Swedish demonstrations and riots, others belonging to the left wing of the Social Democratic Party—the news from Petrograd promised a better future for Russia, Sweden, and the world. As in most other European countries, an ideological rift between the reformist majority and the revolutionary minority within social democracy had grown stronger, and in May 1917, the radical opposition split from the Social Democratic Party to create the Social Democratic Left Party. After the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd in November, the antagonism between political groups increased. While for the reformists the Russian Revolution was not a model suitable for Sweden, they nevertheless saw it as an opportunity to put pressure on non-socialist groups to carry out political and social reforms—primarily universal suffrage and an eight-hour working day. The radicals, on the contrary, wanted Sweden to follow in the footsteps of the Russian revolutionaries and join the Bolsheviks’

efforts to put an end to war and injustice.

In the Swedish case, however, the relation to Russia was not only ideological and political. There was a large group of people whose life and future was immediately and tangibly connected to the Russian Revolution. It consisted of Swedes who lived in Petrograd, many of whom were long-term inhabitants.

Some of the first Swedish St. Petersburg inhabitants were prisoners from the Great Nordic War of 1700–1721. They had been forced to take an active part in the construction of Peter’s new city. Some of them remained in Russia when they were set free after the 1721 Nystad peace agreement. It has been noted that in the prerevolutionary St. Petersburg period, when the Russian capital was “a huge sieve of humankind, a city of comers and goers” in the Baltic Sea area, Swedes were also more peacefully drawn to the metropolis.² However, in contrast to the Finns and Estonians from the absolute vicinity of Russia who migrated to St. Petersburg in large numbers, Swedish emigration was more of an “urban long-distance transfer of small specialist groups,” people mainly connected to Sweden’s “genius” industries—Nobel, ASEA, L. M. Ericsson, Alfa-Laval, and the ball bearing industry SKF.³ In short, prerevolutionary Russia was an important economic market for Swedish trade and industry, especially in the economically expansive decades before the outbreak of the First World War. For the lives of the Swedes in Petrograd, generally a diminishing body that

2 See David Kirby, The Baltic World 1772–1993: Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change (London and New York: Longman, 1995), 166.

3 Max Engman, Peterburgska vägar (Helsinki: Schildts, 1995), 30.